


you can take my breath away

by buckybunnyteeth



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Dorks in Love, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-30 06:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6412648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckybunnyteeth/pseuds/buckybunnyteeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Barry Allen you are insatiable.”</p><p>“Only for you.”</p><p>“Pff, I bet you say that to all the boys.”</p><p>“Yeah, but you’re the only one its ever worked on.”</p><p>Cisco shuts him up with a kiss. Because he can. And because one day he might not be allowed to anymore. It will be someone else’s job. </p><p> </p><p>or; Five times Cisco tried to wake Barry up and one time he had to beg him to stay awake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you can take my breath away

“I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.”  
― Margaret Atwood

 

1\. 

“He shoots! He scores!”

The last of his paper balls hits the lip of the bin and very much does not land inside of it. Cisco huffs and leans back in his chair, suddenly laden with absolutely nothing to do. 

He shoots a glance across the room to where monitors beep steadily and a man lays completely, unnaturally still.

“C’mon that was a good shot.”

No answer. Typical. 

No matter how much he talks to this guy he doesn’t even show any sign of waking up. All those Sandra Bullock rom coms have been lying to him. 

Though they got the whole coma laden guy is handsome part right. ‘They’ being a lightning storm caused by a particle excelerator explosion, which he is partially responsible for. 

Is it creepy to think a guy in a coma is cute? It feels creepy. Plus he has gorgeous woman after gorgeous woman flocking to his bedside. Cisco has had the privilege of meeting both Iris and Felicity and also had the privilege of being insanely jealous of a comatose dude. Pale skin, a splattering of moles and fluffy hair must be universally attractive.

Cisco sighs and scrubs a hand down his face. Ever since STAR labs went out of business his days have fluctuated between full of energy and activity, and days where he was so bored he could feel his eyeballs melting. Today is the latter.

“But the company’s alright, hey big guy?”

The man in the hospital bed doesn’t do anything but breath. Cisco huffs again. 

It’s been about a month since the Wests let Dr. Wells bring Barry into the lab. Cisco has been relegated to temporary nurse for the duration of his stay, which basically just means he follows Caitlin’s instructions and gets super worried about Barry dying while she’s gone. The Wests, when they visit, look at him like they’re not sure he knows what he is doing and he has to agree with that assessment. 

Truth be told Cisco had been avoiding nurse duty as much as possible. He was coming up with new inventions quicker than ever, only to half finish them before moving on to the next one, just so he could stay detached from what was going on. Because going to work in a skeleton of your most favourite place in the world is hard enough without a living breathing manifestation of your guilt being there 24/7. 

That’s all he could see when he looked at Barry. The faces of everyone hurt by the mistakes made in this building. Could see Ronnie’s face. 

And Caitlin barely talks anymore. Barely looks anyone in the eye. The silence of the whole place is crushing in on him more and more each day and now these people think that he can help save Barry? 

But Caitlin and Dr. Wells aren’t here now so Cisco has to just suck it up and sit beside the comatose man, feelings of guilt and helplessness be damned.

“She’s really hot, you know,” Cisco says as he rolls his chair over to Barry’s bedside, “Your sister or whatever. Your Iris. And your Felicity, she’s hot too. And they’re both scary smart so you know, that amplifies it all.”

The respirator in Barry’s throat continues to pump and the sound bounces around the empty room in a way that unnerves him.

“I have two brothers,” Cisco cays suddenly, without really thinking, skin crawling from the silence, “Well only one of them is still around. Dante. He’s older and a massive jerk, but I still love him.”

Cisco piles his arms on the edge of Barry’s bed and leans his chin down on them to stare up at the other man. 

“My other brother, Armando, he went missing when he was sixteen. Everything kind of went to shit after that. He’s the reason I got into science though. He wanted to build the future,” Cisco snorts, “There’s irony in that, isn’t there? Guy who wants to change the world dies before he can?”

In and out. In and out. The machine takes Barry’s breathes for him. 

“He was Captain of the Football team and the biggest dork in the world, I swear to god. He used to cart around these books about Physics that made my twelve year old head spin. Well maybe not spin, I understood more of it than anyone else my age. See I know physics, so you should wake up and we can jam about Quantum Theory and shit.” 

The hospital grade quiet continues and Cisco has too look away from Barry. He feels like a voyeur here. He’s not family or a friend and he sure as hell isn’t a medical professional. He feels akin to a guilty criminal returning to the scene of his crime and crying like the wounds he inflicted burn him instead of others. 

“So yeah,” he says too loud in the quiet room, voice thick with tears that no one else will see, “You should totally wake up. We can totally be bros, you know …. If you don’t hate me.”

Something in his chest twists. The idea of this stranger hating him hurts more than it should.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” he snorts, a grim smile spreading across his face, “It would be hypocritical of me.”

Barry’s left hand twitches and Cisco jerks back from the bed with a yelp.

“Caitlin!” he shouts, “Caitlin, gotta call Caitlin!”

He trips over his sneakers in an effort to get to his phone and calls her from the floor. She makes him read three articles on involuntary muscle spasms in coma patients. 

 

2\. 

“Cisco this isn’t sanitary!”

He rolls his eyes and steps out of the elevator.

“He’s cleaner that we are put together, Cait.”

“But he’s … he’s-”

“Adorable and fuzzy? Completely and utterly wonderful?”

Caitlin huffs and crosses her arms, heels clicking menacingly as she follows him through the hallways to the Cortex.

“The Wests are not going to like this.”

“The Wests don’t like dogs?”

“Cisco.”

“I was reading a paper about the benefits of coma patients interacting with therapy dogs. If this wakes Barry up the Wests aren’t going to mind.”

“That wasn’t a paper that was a morning show fluff piece!”

Cisco shrugs and winds the leash a little tighter around his fist as they round the corner into the Cortex. He wasn’t expecting to find the room so crowded, stopping in the doorway guiltily as Sunflower pants happily at his side.

He guesses now is the time to test how the Wests will react to the whole doggy healing thing. 

“Yo,” Cisco says to Iris, walking forwards like he wasn’t just panicking, 

Iris raises a perfect eyebrow at him. She looks like she’s been crying and it makes him feel like a giant jerk. It’s been a few days since they cycled out the drugs that they were using to keep Barry under. And while his condition has been stable he has shown absolutely zero signs of waking up. Dr. Wells keeps saying he will wake up when it’s his time to, but that can’t exactly be comforting to Barry’s family. 

Ipso-facto Cisco has a dog to hopefully slingshot Barry into the land of the living once more. It’s the best plan he could come up with. He really wants to actually meet this dude.

“Hello, Cisco,” she says hesitantly, “What’s with the dog?”

“Dog? What do- Oh you mean this dog!” He chuckles uncomfortably and scratches the back of his head.

Iris gives him a hard look. 

Cisco forces a smile and walks over to stand beside Iris at Barry’s bedside. 

“I was reading a paper-”

Caitlin clears he throat loudly.

“-Okay, I was watching Sunrise this morning and I saw a thing about a girl who got woken out of her coma because someone bought a therapy dog into her hospital room. It’s not exactly hard science or anything but…”

“Therapy dog?”

Everyone looks down at Sunshine, who has contorted his fluffy yellow body away from the leed in an attempt to lick at the nearest chair leg.

“Uh … close enough?”

Iris gives him another hard look.

“It’s worth a try.”

Caitlin looks shocked by her answer, and Cisco can’t say he’s much better. But instead of questioning it Cisco just picks Sunshine up to deposit him on the bed next to Barry’s knee. Caitlin grumbles about unsanitary conditions but makes no move to remove the puppy, settling instead for going to find her special vegan hand soap.

Sunshine sniffs around Barry’s knee for a while before climbing up onto his chest with clumsy puppy feet. As they watch he curls up, licks up under Barry’s chin and promptly falls asleep.

No medical miracle comes, Barry doesn’t wake up with a big smile or a musical swell. The machines continue to beep and his chest rises rhythmically without change. A distant irrational part of Cisco is hurt and frustrated, had been hoping that Barry would miraculously awaken and they would finally get to meet each other. As cute as a puppy looks sleeping on his chest, it isn’t what he was hoping for.

Cisco looks up when a warm hand closes around his own. Iris looks back at him, teary eyed and smiling.

“Thank you.”

Cisco lets a shaky smile onto his face.

“Maybe I just got the needed quantity of puppies wrong.”

Iris laughs, soft and earnest, making Sunshine’s ears prick up.

“Where did you get this one anyway?”

“My Abuela. Her Lab had eight of them.”

“…do you have photos?”

“Pff, do I have photos? I’ll show you photos.”

 

3\. 

“ _…Would you tremble if I touched your lips? Would you laugh? Oh, please tell me this. Now would you die for the one you love? Hold me in your arms, tonig-_ “

“Cisco I swear to god.”

“ _I can be your hero, baby. I can kiss away the pain. I will stand by you forever_.”

“Cisco everyone else got stick of that song years ago!”

“ _You can take my breath away_.”

“Cisco!”

“Alright yeesh!” Cisco says, jumping out of the way of Caitlin’s swat, “I thought Barry might appreciate the performance.”

“His brain activity spikes once while you’re singing and suddenly you think you can sing him awake?”

“Well nothing else has worked so why not?”

“…are you even a scientist?”

Cisco rolls his eyes at her but stands up to let her start her examination of their comatose friend. He’s been off the respirator for some time and hasn’t seized in just as long, but he still isn’t awake. It’s getting a little disheartening, as Dr. Wells likes to say. 

“Can you help me move his bed into the main room? I think some natural light would do him good.”

Cisco nods and pops a red vine in his mouth before grabbing one side of the bed to help push it into the next room. 

“His brain activity has been picking up over the last few days,” Caitlin says absently as she starts her examination, “No spikes of activity that would indicate consciousness, though.”

“See, we need something to kick-start the brain activity, spur him into waking up!”

Two clicks on his keyboard and Lady Gaga starts playing out of his speakers.

“What are you doing?”

“He likes this song,” Cisco teases and snaps a red-vine in his mouth.

“How could you possibly know that?”

“I checked his Facebook page. I mean he can hear everything, right?”

“Auditory functions are the last of the sensory faculties to degenerate.”

Cisco nods and turns away, singing just to annoy her.

“ _Can’t read my, no you can’t read my poker f-_ “

A sudden jerk of motion and a loud gasp startles them both.

“Oh my god!”

And suddenly they are in a flurry of motion and medical jargon as they get to meet Barry Allen for the first time.

 

4\. 

 

“Barry! Barry you have to wake up!”

Cisco shakes the speedster’s shoulders but it isn’t working. The building is falling apart around them as the flames grew closer and hotter. Barry had been knocked out by their villain of the week, Magenta, and a falling piece of ceiling had broken Cisco’s leg. They’d thought that they could talk to Magenta, get her to stop her evil ways, but in a rather frantic fight she had accidentally triggered a fire in the abandoned warehouse and knocked the Flash out.

Now they are stuck, about to die with no one on the way to save them. 

So Cisco really really needs Barry to wake up now.

“Caitlin!” Cisco yelled into the microphone of the Flash suit, “Caitlin he’s not waking up, I don’t know what to do, please I-”

“You need to shock him into waking up, Cisco. A sudden shock of outside stimulus should knock him back into consciousness.”

“What? What does that mea-“

“Slap him.”

“What?”

“ _Slap. Him._ ”

Cisco stared down at his best friend, his slack face and puff hair, and he grimaces.

“Sorry, Barry.”

The slap connects with a loud smack and Barry instantly jerks awake, throws a pointed ‘ow!’ at Cisco, then notices the burning building and whisks them both out of there moments before it all comes crashing down on their heads. 

“Did- did you slap me, Cisco?”

“Pfff, what? I would never do that. Must be the smoke inhalation, Caitlin should really check you out ASAP.”

“…The smoke inhalation caused this hand print on my cheek?”

“Ummm.”

 

5\. 

Sunlight streams in through his apartment window and into his face, instantly chasing away the possibility of more sleep. Cisco groans softly and moves to roll over when sensation comes back to his body and he realizes he isn’t as alone in his bed as he thought. He cracks open his eyes and a grin spreads across his face when he sees Barry’s dopey sleeping face. 

For a moment Cisco thought that yesterday had been a dream. That he and Barry hadn’t escaped from Earth-2, hadn’t watched one of their friends die and somewhere between the grief and the frustration Barry had cornered Cisco in an empty hallway at STAR Labs and kissed the living bejesus out of him. That they hadn’t stumbled home together and fallen into bed, minds caught in between the grief over losing a friend and the relief of their escape from Zoom’s evil lair. 

If Cisco was being honest he would say that he had expected Barry would go after Iris after seeing Earth-2 him married to Earth-2 her. Never in a million years would he expect to be the object of Barry’s romantic interest. If romantic is what this is. They hadn’t talked about it. All thoughts of talking flew out of Cisco’s head when they walked through the door and Barry dropped to his knees with this adorably determined look on his face. Barry Allen is scary good a blow jobs. Cisco kind of wants to shout it from the roof tops but at the same time wants absolutely no one else to know. 

He spends another moment just looking at his bed mate before temptation becomes too much and he leans forward to lay a soft kiss on Barry’s throat, where a hickey had been just hours earlier. Damn super healing. Cisco has a few of them on his shoulder and neck and he kind of hopes they never heal. Wants to keep them long after Barry realizes he still wants Iris.

He trails his lips up behind Barry’s ear to the hinge of his jaw and stays there for a moment, wanting to memorize the sound of Barry’s stuttered breathing and-

And oh god Barry is still asleep, this is super creepy who knew he didn’t have impulse control first thing in the morning?

He goes to pull back but is stopped by an arm slipping around his waist. 

“Don’t stop.”

Cisco shivers at the low timber of Barry’s voice. All of a sudden that burning anticipation from last night is back at full force.

Cisco presses his lips back against Barry’s skin and kisses along his jaw until their mouths meet. 

“Urgh, morning breath.”

Barry chuckles and leans back a bit to smile at him. 

“I thought I dreamed last night.”

Cisco presses his face into the hand Barry brings up to stroke through his hair.

“You dream about me often, Bear?”

“Sometimes,” Cisco watches Barry’s eyes go wide, “I mean, not in a creepy way or anything! Just like normal dreams, normal everyday dreams! And, well, some not so normal dreams-“

Cisco laughs and stops Barry’s ramble with a kiss. 

“You can dream about me whenever you want, man.”

“Yeah?” Barry grins at him and it makes something flip in Cisco’s stomach, in a good but dangerous way, “Well you can wake me up with kisses whenever you want.”

Cisco tries not to let his doubt show in his smile.

“Deal. Now let me make you pancakes.”

“Yeah! Or, or you know we could put a pause on that and … you know.”

He waggles his eyebrows and Cisco snorts.

“Barry Allen you are _insatiable_.”

“Only for you.”

“Pff, I bet you say that to all the boys.”

“Yeah, but you’re the only one it’s ever worked on.”

Cisco shuts him up with a kiss. Because he can. And because one day he might not be allowed to anymore. It will be someone else’s job. 

 

+1. 

“Barry! Barry you have to stay awake man, come on, helps on the way you just have to stay awake-“

There’s too much blood oh god, too much on his hands and on the ground please god.

“-we got him, we got Zoom! You won Barry, we’re safe! Please, no, you have to stay awake! Stay with me Barry!”

Barry smiles up at Cisco and its _red red red_.

“I love you.”

“No, no, _Dios_ , Barry you have to stay awake.”

“I-I love you Cisco.”

“Barry!”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know where this came from I am having such a writers block working on a daredevil matt/foggy fic so I just made this to kind of break that block. Cisco and Barry are just so cute together who could not ship them? Tell me what you think!


End file.
